Part of me can't help but feel very sad about this because for a time in the '90s the Sci-Fi Dominion DS board was a magical place to post. That might sound fanciful to the people who were unfamiliar with it at that time, but it's absolutely true. Though the truly sad thing is that the people at Sci-Fi allowed trolls to run amuck, causing all manner of problems (some of which actually prompted FBI intervention and resolution). And as of late I've been told that the Sci-Fi moderators were deleting topics at whim and treating DS fans with disdain. (Though treating DS fans with disdain is hardly a new practice for all too many at Sci-Fi - even when fans have been in the right. Who will ever forget how they refused to admit those Leviathans eps had ever been played out of sequence and how they treated everyone who presented actual evidence as if they were hallucinating?! ) But I like to hope that some good did come out of the strife because if the trolls had never infested that board, Midnite and I would never have been prompted to create a new board on VantageNet, and this forum would have never evolved out of it. So, I for one am actually grateful to the trolls. And wouldn't it just kill them to know that their actions actually prompted something that I would like to hope has given DS fans a certain degree of pleasure.

Yes, indeed you are right, MB, this board has given us DS fans a great deal of pleasure! 

So thanks to you and Midnite for creating a wonderful board! 

  Happy birthday, David! what an excellent actor he is, everything just seems to be so natural with him, as if he isn't acting at all! 

I've been in theatre most of my life, and the concept of a "drama queen" is very familiar to me. I'm a little bit of one myself. Such folks don't simply react to an event, or to trauma, but take up a pose and/or attitude for dramatic effect. Drama Queens come in all ranges and styles--from those who simply have loads of flair to their lives, to those to turn every typo into a scene from Tennessee Williams (I used to work for one of those).

But that is of course a different thing from the whole idolization of stoicism and distrust of emotion we've inheirited from the Victorian Age. That, while sometimes useful, is often unhealthy. And I firmly believe that in our current age it is coupled with somthing much, much worse--a sense of isolation stemming from a lack of process and shared ritual in our lives. I think as a people we seem to be losing our ability to empathize. We focus so much on being ourselves as individuals we sometimes lose track of ourselves as members of a family, a community, a nation, a species, etc. And too often we are amazingly impatient with others' troubles while demanding absolute understanding and forgiveness for our own. This frankly has come to permeate, among other things, politics as well as personal relationships.

Ours is a strange, neurotic time.

I found your post most interesting and insightful. Thanks for sharing your observations. 

This might be narrow minded, but I just can't see Julia with anyone other than Barnabas! IMHO, they should have gotten together. I don't believe Barnabas was as oblivious to Julia as he pretended. She is almost his equal in attitude and speaking her own opinions, and perhaps that scares him just a bit, being the old-fashioned person that he is, and acknowledging her as someone hehe loved was in a way giving her power over him, over his emotions and his outlook on the world in general. Being the modern woman she is, her attitude could slowly change his own opinions of life and his place in it, and Barnabas is reluctant to change, I believe it frightens him.

All right, there were plenty of times when Barnabas was insensative to Julia's feelings, and once they became friends all those other women he kept falling head over heels for made him oblivious to some things around him, Julia most especially.

So now I'm contradicting myself, LOL! I'm not sure I know what to make of their relationship, accept for the fact that they definitely belong together.

  Have a great birthday, BuzzH!

Gabriel was not a good guy that's for sure, but he had a way of mocking situations and people, making snide comments, always ready to take amusement at someone else's expense, and when he did this with someone like Gerard, it was such fun to watch.

Setting his "not-so-good-deeds" aside however, I felt bad for him. He never got along well with his father, and there's a scene with him and Daniel that is so very well done and sad, with [spoiler]Gabriel begging to know why his father never loved him as he so obviously did Quentin. Daniel seemed incapable of loving Gabriel due to his disability, quite a shame really! Gabriel wanted and needed his father's approval, and perhaps if he would have been accepted as a child by his father, he wouldn't have grown up to be so bitter.[/spoiler] I'm not making excuses for him, just trying to comprehend his actions and motives.

Edith was also very cruel to him, taunting him, making him feel worthless because he couldn't walk, [spoiler]even though he was playing that role falsely, she didn't know that, and first time viewers didn't know that.[/spoiler] She should have accepted him as he was, yet another incident where he was scorned by someone who is supposed to care for him. Granted, we don't know under what circumstances they were married, perhaps they were forced in to it, and that might explain her coldness, but I still felt bad every time she was cruel to him.

Did he have faults? most definitely! But in some ways he's a tragic man as well.

I also liked Cyrus Longworth. He was a gentle man who was trying hard to make a difference in the world, [spoiler]and in the end he came to such a sad fate.[/spoiler]

He was kind of a cool character, Jeremy Grimes, I liked his interaction with carie.

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